Business Page – February 18th, 2001

Pursuit of Quality

Introduction

Few Guyanese know much about the efforts of the
Guyana National Bureau of Standards to set quality standards in Guyana.
Clearly the GNBS has an uphill task. It first has to win the confidence of
the Guyanese public and second that despite its name quality is one of its
legitimate objectives. Our private sector is a blinkered, turf-conscious
group that, at best, regards regulation as expensive and intrusive and
generally does not welcome attempts to put them under the microscope. Yet
there is perhaps nothing that determines an enterprise’s success in the
international market place as the quality of its products and services. It
is perhaps no co-incidence that the world’s two leading economic
powerhouses – the USA and Japan – have made quality their national
business and in the case of the USA, there is a law established by President
Ronald Regan in 1987 that sets the standards for excellence and recognises
outstanding performances in a national awards system. This is on top of such
other prestigious programmes as the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the
Year.

Recognising excellence

The Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award is an annual Award to recognise U.S. companies for
business excellence and quality achievement. The purposes of the Award are
to promote awareness of quality as an increasingly important element in
competitiveness, understanding of the requirements for performance
excellence, and sharing of information on successful performance strategies
and the benefits derived form implementation of these strategies. The Award
has three eligibility categories: manufacturing companies, services
companies, and small businesses. Recipients of the awards are expected to
share information about their successful performance strategies with other
U.S. organisations.

The process itself is time consuming and
costly but the benefits are enormous. The discipline and processes involved
in the preparation for examination guarantee that the business improves no
matter how it fares in the “competition” One of the benefits of
participation is the written feedback from the judges of the strengths and
areas for improvement in the entity’s quality management.

Currently more than twenty leading countries
including Canada, Australia, Brazil and India have quality award programmes
based on the US model. The criteria set by the US law identify three
important roles in strengthening competitiveness. (1) To help improve
performance practice and capabilities. (2) To facilitate communication and
sharing of best practice information among and within organisations of all
types based upon a common understanding of key performance requirements. (3)
To serve as a working tool for managing performance, planning, training, and
assessment. The Criteria was designed to help companies enhance their
competitiveness through delivery of ever-improving value to customers,
resulting in marketplace success; and improvement of overall company
performance and capabilities.

These criteria are built upon a set of ten
core values and concepts only some of which are referred to in this article.
They implicitly suggest that to succeed almost certainly requires that the
enterprise’s management thoroughly review and indeed re-invent itself. It
has to establish new forms of relationships with its customers, employees
and its shareholders. It has to be honest and fair with all of them.
Shareholders must be told that short-term financial results that arise from
a high-price rather than a high-quality strategy will have long-term
negative implications. The business constitutes a whole series of processes,
functions and stakeholders all of which are inter-related.

In the final analysis it is success in the
market place that drives shareholders value and emphasis must therefore
focus on customer-driven quality. It is the market place, the customer that
determines quality. Businesses must therefore strive to build and maintain a
relationship with customers that foster trust, confidence, and loyalty. Too
few of our businesses spend little or no time trying to find out who their
customers are and what their look for in the product or service.

This requires good
leadership. It is the role of the company's senior leaders to set directions
and create a customer orientation, clear and visible values, and high
expectations. A leader must put the company before his/her personal
popularity. They must possess and demonstrate intellect, common sense,
dependability, flexibility, integrity, judgment, courage and very
importantly respect for others. A leader’s duty includes participation in
the creation of strategies, systems, and methods for achieving excellence
and building capabilities. The senior leaders need to commit to the
development of the entire work force and should encourage participation and
creativity by all employees.

Employee Participation
and Development

In a country where the
educational standards seem unable to rise despite massive expenditure on
education, companies are finding it increasingly necessary to develop the
skills and motivate its workforce by traditional and non-traditional means.
If we are to compete successfully in the international marketplace our
workforce has to receive better training, education and development. Leaders
are not much good without followers and one of the problems entrepreneurs
constantly experience in Guyana is that the middle slots in the organisation
are vacant. Without a sound secondary and tertiary education, the employee
starts at considerable disadvantage and the cost to the employer to redeem
that person is prohibitive. The Guyanese entrepreneur has no choice and must
be prepared to offer to his employees increasing opportunities to learn and
to practice new skills. Such opportunities might include classroom and
on-the-job training and must be reinforced by the example set by the
leaders.

Employees have to be trained
to understand the organisation and their place in it. Management must be
prepared to invest in every one of its employees using tools and technology
that are appropriate. Registering persons in this and that training course
without any follow up is a waste of money and demoralising.

Long Range Outlook

Pursuit of market leadership
that comes from a commitment to quality requires a strong future orientation
and a willingness to make long-term commitments to all stakeholders:
customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, the public, and the
community. Planning requires a good statistical base and easy access to
reliable information. It also requires a multidisciplinary team capable of
making reasonable predictions about changes in the population structure,
customers' expectations of products and services, technological
developments, legal, taxation and regulatory requirements, and
community/societal expectations.

Management by Fact

A modern business management
system needs to be built upon a framework of measurement, information, data
and analysis. Measurements must derive from the company's strategy and
encompass all key processes and the outputs and results of those processes.
Facts and data needed for performance improvement and assessment are of many
types, including: customer, product and service performance, operations,
market, competitive comparisons, supplier, employees-related, and cost and
financial. Analysis refers to extracting larger meaning from data to support
evaluation and decision-making at various levels within the company. A major
consideration in the use of data and analysis to improve performance
involves the creation and use of performance measures or indicators.
Performance measures or indictors are measurable characteristics of
products, services, processes, and operations the company uses to track and
improve performance.

Conclusion

The issues identified above exclude technology, speed
to market, research and development and infrastructure. These of course are
very important and are part of the whole. Important too is the environment
in which the business operates. We often hear such platitudes that
government is the facilitator but there is little evidence of this around.
In a highly politicized society as Guyana, businesses have few votes and
there is not a whole lot of help available from governments. Re-inventing
government to make it into a facilitator is still some way off.